It looks like writer’s block. If feels like writer’s block. I had even thought it was writer’s block. It happened years ago, when I was planning on spending most of my time writing this blog. I got to this point, and I just couldn’t bring myself to continue. And it’s happening again now. But it’s not writer’s block. The main problem isn’t a lack of inspiration or creativity. The main problem seems to be that I just cannot bring myself to continue past this blockage.

I unveiled a private post that I had made awhile ago, at the time of the trigger moment for our crisis in Syzygy. “Today, I had to do something harsh“: it was the day everything started to really fall apart. It was the day I asked for Guild Mastership back from Nimn, and in her pain and anger, she decided to go full on scorched earth and lash out in ways that would not just hurt Shandare, but hurt me and the rest of the guild too. Some day, I will unveil the posts that I made at that time, privated and protected, that I think show exactly how much her actions, and the consequences of her actions, actually did end up hurting me.

But looking at the moment that I asked for Guild Master back, I feel a lot of uncertainty about the decision I made. I wonder if, in my decision-making process at that time, I was too hyper-focused on saving my guild, and unable to see the whole picture. As far as saving Syzygy goes, I, even now, believe I made the best choice. Once Nimn precipitated a crisis by overtly using her powers to benefit herself and her personal friends, at the expense of the guild, and in a way that clearly undercut the person who was truly holding the guild together, we had no choice but to deal with things then and there. And, even in retrospect, I still think that of all the possible ways to deal with it, my asking for Guild Mastership was the safest viable choice for Syzygy. Up to that point, she had always professed that she really liked and respected me. More importantly, when I had previously left the guild, it was always understood that I may one day come back and become Guild Master again, indeed, I understand that’s what guildies (including her at the time) had hoped for. Of course, there was the issue of my being very fragile by the time of this crisis, and the fact that Nimn herself was the main instigator of my relapse into trauma, so me directly dealing with the situation was a far from optimal solution. But all other options seemed much worse. I’ve thought through them again in writing this, and I am still confident that, at least for Syzygy, I chose the best option available.

Today, someone made a respectful and polite comment, that was ever so slightly a critique, related to one of our trial members in Syzygys. The comment implied that the leadership of the guild may not have done enough to give that trial member feedback, about what they needed to improve and so on. And it implied that if the trial did not do well, it was because the leadership did not provide the feedback needed. And I felt… ahhhhh…. it’s been awhile since I’ve seen this sort of a comment, maybe a few months. But I used to receive comments like this every day.

Comments like this are usually true. Leadership of guilds can always give more feedback to trials, and make their potential path towards full membership more structured and clear. I agree that this could have been handled better by the leadership. But this truth exists in a vacuum.

I reread and unveiled The dangers of resting. There was nothing in it that required it to be protected, really. No sensitive information or anything. I suppose I must have protected it because at the time I had felt so intensely vulnerable, and did not feel safe enough to expose all of my vulnerability to the world.

Since I wrote it, I’ve been in a lot of therapy. And I realize that at that time, I had very little control over my brain. A healthy brain is able to move from topic to topic, emotion to emotion, and not be overwhelmed by a specific topic or emotion. The very next day, after writing this post, I started intense therapy. For the first few weeks of that therapy, it was all about being able to avoid drowning in my pain and my thoughts, to be able to feel and think other things. It is now 3 months on from that day, and there is no longer any danger to my resting. It does not mean that 3 months of intense therapy has been enough for me to overcome everything, since rereading what I wrote then still fills me with pain and grief, as those feelings rush back. But I am able to move on now. When I finish this post, I will start thinking about something else. The feelings of pain will fade and be replaced by whatever feelings are associated with whatever I do next.

A few months ago my guild and I went through a crisis. The result of the crisis is that we had to abandon my guild, Syzygy, and ended up reforming under the name of Syzygys. During this time, I had a lot of thoughts and went through a lot of mental upheaval. I did my best to record it all in real time, since I regretted not doing so the last time when I was guild master/raid leader. At that time, years ago, I had occasionally written some private journal entries that I did not connect with this blog, and looking back on it years later I find it interesting and poignant. Most stories of emotional crises are written after the crises are over, and people have had time to process what happened. What is written in the midst of the crisis has its own specific truth and flavor that is much harder to capture when writing in retrospect.

However, there was a lot of information that was sensitive at the moment of the crisis, that I did not feel comfortable making public at the time. Some of it, I still don’t feel comfortable making public. Some of it, I may never feel comfortable making public. But as about 3 months has passed, and Syzygys is stable and doing well, I feel that I can revisit some of what I wrote to slowly unveil what I feel comfortable unveiling. When I wrote it at the time, I either made it Private or Password-Protected. If it were Private, no one would be able to see that I even wrote anything. As I open them up, I will add them to a list in this post. For some of them, I may make additional posts with some of my current thoughts, now that I have had time to process and heal.

A couple nights ago I had a dream in which I became really emotional. I’ve been watching Big Bang theory a lot recently, and in my dream, my friends were the people from Big Bang Theory, and they were criticizing me. I found the criticisms hurtful and was upset, and this annoyed and angered them more. They said I always do this, that it’s impossible to give me feedback because I keep making them feel bad for it. Each time, what I do is: I get all upset, feel sorry for myself, and play the victim. After they angrily told me all that, I wanted to get away, leave everything, leave the world, but I had already made things so bad by showing I was upset, it would be worse and even more selfish if I committed suicide. So instead, I walked away and hid for an entire day. My hiding away worried my friends immensely, and when they finally found me they were upset but afraid to show their anger. So, I felt even more terrible. I shouldn’t have gotten upset in the first place, then I shouldn’t have handled my emotions so badly, causing those who cared about me to worry. And on top of that, I really shouldn’t have made them feel so much pressure and guilt that they were afraid to get legitimately angry at me for my hugely inconsiderate behavior.

Something happened some days ago that reminded me a lot of what happened when all the drama happened in Syzygy that forced us to move guilds. A real life friend sent me a message on my birthday telling me there was no point in wishing me happy birthday because I don’t respond to her messages for so long, that I didn’t care for her even half the amount I cared for my stupid game and guild, and that I am a crappy friend.

These past several weeks I have spent so much of my time and effort trying to recover. I try to just focus on the now, think about the various mindfulness steps to help me overcome my problems, bring my body and brain out of the constant fight or flight mentality.

And I haven’t really been thinking about what happened. I’ve been hiding it behind a door in my mind, filling the area in front of that door with clutter of anything else so that the pain behind that door won’t burst out and overwhelm me.

I was watching a drama where the hard work of generations was in danger of being ruined in a day. And I ended up thinking a bit about how much I had done for Syzygy before it was robbed from me. Like, quantitatively. Every day, recruitment needs to be done. Someone is upset about something that probably needs to be dealt with so it doesn’t build up. Bosses need to be studied. Characters need to be maintained. People need to be “hung out with”, to make sure they don’t feel too alienated from me or the guild in general.

I think it’s reasonable to say for the 2 years or so as gm/rl, I spent on average 8 hours a day building Syzygy up and maintaining it so it didn’t fall. I say it’s reasonable because I know there were some days I tried to take off entirely and binge watched Law and Order, while most days I dealt with stuff literally from the second I opened my eyes, to the moment I fell asleep. Even work was not something that could keep me away for more than an hour or so a day, because in that time my work required so little effort I spent most of it dealing with guild stuff anyway. And there were months where I would chronically sleep 4 to 6 hours a day in order to be able to spend more time dealing with guild stuff, so spending 20 hours a day on guild things was normal for me. So, averaging 8 hours a day over 2 years seems like a reasonable estimate. So, 365*2*8 = 5840. So let’s say I spent about 5000~6000 hours over the 2 years I was gm/rl, purely on building Syzygy and maintaining it.